ABSTRACT
Great transformations rest on great ideas, great movements, and great actions, and occur when all three come together. Thus at the very beginning of the history of covenant there was the great idea of biblical covenantal monotheism whereby humans were envisaged as entering into a morally grounded and informal pact with God, out of which came the people Israel formed through the Exodus from Egypt and the Sinai experience. In the sixteenth century, through the Protestant Reformation, a new theology of covenant gave rise to Reformed Protestantism and the theo-political transformation that followed in countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scotland, and England.
